http://www.saturndaily.com/index.html Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST en-us NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now exploring Saturn, will take a picture of our home planet from a distance of hundreds of millions of miles on July 19. NASA is inviting the public to help acknowledge the historic interplanetary portrait as it is being taken. Earth will appear as a small, pale blue dot between the rings of Saturn in the image, which will be part of a mosaic, or multi-image por]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST A scientific team led by University of Louisville doctoral student Karen Collins has discovered a hot Saturn-like planet in another solar system 700 light-years away. Collins announced the discovery of exoplanet KELT-6b Tuesday, June 4, during the American Astronomical Society's national meeting in Indianapolis. Astronomers caught sight of the planet when it passed in front, or "transited,]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST Scientists have confirmed the presence of PAHs - Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons - in the upper atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The study, based on data from the VIMS instrument on the Cassini orbiter, provides an explanation of the origin of the aerosol particles found in the lowest haze layer that blankets Titan's surface. The PAHs, which form high up in the atmosphere, later grow]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST From a distance, most of the Saturnian moon Dione resembles a bland cueball. Thanks to close-up images of a 500-mile-long (800-kilometer-long) mountain on the moon from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found more evidence for the idea that Dione was likely active in the past. It could still be active now. "A picture is emerging that suggests Dione could be a fossil of the wondrou]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST The temperature in the permafrost on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic is nearly as cold as that of the surface of Mars. So the recent discovery by a McGill University led team of scientists of a bacterium that is able to thrive at -15+ C, the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth, is exciting. The bacterium offers clues about some of the necessary preconditions]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST Saturn's moon Titan might be in for some wild weather as it heads into its spring and summer, if two new models are correct. Scientists think that as the seasons change in Titan's northern hemisphere, waves could ripple across the moon's hydrocarbon seas, and hurricanes could begin to swirl over these areas, too. The model predicting waves tries to explain data from the moon obtained so far by N]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST Scientists have created the first global topographic map of Saturn's moon Titan, giving researchers a valuable tool for learning more about one of the most Earth-like and interesting worlds in the solar system. The map was just published as part of a paper in the journal Icarus. Titan is Saturn's largest moon - with a radius of about 1,600 miles (2,574 kilometers), it's bigger than planet ]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST Researchers working with data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have discovered one way the bubble of charged particles around Saturn - known as the magnetosphere - changes with the planet's seasons. The finding provides an important clue for solving a riddle about the planet's naturally occurring radio signal. The results might also help scientists better understand variations in Earth's m]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST The Solar System is a beautiful place filled with wonders that NASA space probes are only beginning to discover. There's a tendency, though, for people to become indifferent; every year Hubble, Cassini, MESSENGER and other spacecraft beam back gigabytes of jaw-dropping images. After a while, you don't have any more "gasps" left in you. Well, maybe just one more. Inhale deeply, because at t]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are trave]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST As planets age they become darker and cooler. Saturn however is much brighter than expected for a planet of its age - a question that has puzzled scientists since the late sixties. New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience has revealed how Saturn keeps itself looking young and hot. Researchers from the University of Exeter and the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon found that l]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST Before NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS) flies to space on its inaugural mission in 2017, it will fly in place at the agency's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The B-2 Test Stand at Stennis, originally built to test Saturn rocket stages that propelled humans to the moon, is being completely renovated to test the SLS core stage in late 2016 and early 2017. The SLS stage, with four RS]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST NASA says the Cassini spacecraft has sent back the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. High-resolution pictures and video indicated the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth, the space agency reported Monday. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurric]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn's rings. These observations make Saturn's rings the only location besides Earth, the moon and Jupiter where scientists and amateur astronomers have been able to observe impacts as they occur. Studying the impact rate of meteoroids from outside the Sa]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST Astronomers have finally found direct proof that almost all water present in Jupiter's stratosphere was delivered by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which struck the planet in 1994. The result is based on new data from Herschel that revealed more water in Jupiter's southern hemisphere, where the impacts occurred, than in the north as well as probing the vertical distribution of water in the planet's str]]> Thu, 20 JUN 2013 00:53:31 AEST